Triptych

Whatever you do, don't pull the string in the bathroom. It's positioned either over the shower, or the toilet so logically it would appear to be a vent. It's a thin cord with a plastic end bauble that looks like a shade pull. Which is what I thought – I'll just considerately open the vent to let out all the moisture from the shower. The word for embarrassed in Italian is embarazzare, which is what I was when the desk clerk pounded loudly on my door while I was slathering my hair with shampoo.
“Signora! SIGNORA! Are you ok?”
“Yes, why?,” I sputtered from my towel, water and bubbles pooling onto the carpet, “What's wrong? Is there a fire? Earthquake? What?”
“You pulled the alarm! It rang in my office!”
“Alarm? What alarm?” I was thoroughly confused until she pointed to the vent cord. “Oh... that's not a vent fan then?” She looked amused and annoyed in a friendly sort of way that read “stupid American.” After all, she ran up 3 flight of stairs and had plenty of time to think about what not to expect from a society that doesn't even have bidets in their culture. How can they be civilized?

The Bankomat
It took me 11 tries before the man outside the bank lobby at ATM machine started to look a bit impatient. Still unable to figure out why I couldn't get the curser on the screen to move or register, confirm and give me cash, I was getting pretty frustrated with myself. I unlocked the door and pleaded with the nice Italian man for assistance. Had it been properly lighted in the room I could have seen that there were 2 other rows of command buttons hidden along the metal frame on both sides of the screen to activate the functions, in addition to the keys and arrows on the main board. I was just happy to have been shown how to do it and grateful that the machine didn't keep my card on the 13th attempt.

Le Pedonale
From the people that perfected the aquaduct comes the genius pedonale – like the people movers at airports only these moving walkways are on an incline that would be a black diamond expert ski run if there was snow on them. It's not for beginners or the weak of knee. The city of L'aquila is on top of a mountain foothill and the bus terminal is at the bottom. To get to the station without thumping luggage (ladened with all those shoes locals must own) down cascading medieval steps for a quarter mile, the planners devised a series of descending moving ramps. Ascending from the station back up to the city is like climbing the Matterhorn... but descending with bags – the trick is not to let your luggage run over you on the way down. Better to have it in front to pull you faster down the ramp than face the embarazzano of getting knocked down and mauled by your own bags. I arrived at the bus for Santo Stefano di Sessanio somewhat bruised but a far wiser traveler. (in my dilemma, I didn't stop for photos of the pedonale... )